


A little touch of Hazell

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault, The Senior Commoner - Julian Hall
Genre: Anecdotage, Blackmail, Crossover, Gossip, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Misogyny, Period-Typical Homophobia, School, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6685753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just how <i>does</i> Ralph know about Hazell's 'success story'?</p><p>*</p><p>Content note: brief reference to sexual exploitation of teenagers by an adult, reference to canonical underage sexual activity with English public-school power differential, reference to blackmail, canon-typical effeminophobia, misogyny, sexism, Ralph Lanyon being his own exhaustive &c.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A little touch of Hazell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disenchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/gifts).



> Thanks to [AJHall](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall) for beta reading.

‘Pinkers for the road, dear?’

Bim bounded up without waiting for assent and crossed the bedsitter―a Regency morning-room brutally quartered―towards the bureau. Even barefoot, Ralph thought, Bim moved as if he wore high heels, but the high heels of Cyrano addressing an opponent, not― Blinking, Ralph at first couldn't think where Rostand had surfaced from, abruptly remembered and considered that a large pink gin probably wouldn’t suffice to drown Odell’s appalled, wooden Christian, though it would do for starters. Had the French Play (scenes from) been cast according to pragmatic custom, Odell should probably have taken the title role, but schoolboy decorum, as prone to revere as to ridicule good looks, had fought shy of the notion; a reaction which Ralph, for his part, still understood perfectly. 

‘Coo―ee? In or out?’ Bim, now clad in a blue and gold jacquard dressing-gown, swirled a glass illustratively. 

‘Oh―er, in?’ Ralph reached for his underclothes and trousers. 

‘Should have guessed, really.’ 

‘Oh, dry up, for God’s sake.’ 

‘ _Touchy_. I only meant it was sovereign for the old _mal de mer_.’ 

‘From which I don’t happen to suffer, thanks,’ Ralph snapped, buttoning. 

‘Modern psychology says different, I believe,’ Bim said, placing Ralph’s drink on the rickety fireside table, sole survivor, by the looks of it, of an exceptionally nasty gilded nest. ‘You take the armchair, you’re the caller.’ He swung one of the two bent-cane chairs around, swung his leg over and perched on it, delicately but obscenely, since he had not bothered to retrieve the cord of his dressing-gown from the bedpost. 

‘What? Oh. La mère.’ But for his earlier train of thought, Ralph reflected, it would probably have gone humiliatingly over his head. ‘But I was always in a Greek form, you see. And then on the science side.’ 

Though quite true, Ralph’s peers having been the last set for whom study of a modern language was considered the dilettantish preserve of lesser intellects, as a retort it merely combined the low satisfaction of childishness with the still baser one of treachery. Oddly, it seemed to have made an impact: behind the harlequin domino of Bim’s repartee, his eyes were uncertain; ironically enough, rather as if he were the crisp, forcible product of a decent public school struggling to accommodate his tongue to Plato’s sensuous abstract nouns. 

Ralph sank into the armchair and applied himself to his gin. ‘Good health.’ He offered his cigarette case and patted his pockets for matches. 

‘Here’s to the next to go. Look, Ralph―since you mention it, I think we have an acquaintance in common. Here.’ Bim produced a weighty dull-pewter lighter from his dressing-gown pocket. 

‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised.’ 

‘I mean from school.’ 

‘Unlikely.’ 

‘Eliminate the impossible―’ 

'And you might still be left with bullshit, but go on.'

‘Well, I knew your history, naturally―’ 

‘Never saw any point in hiding it.’ 

‘―quite, but the _on-dit_ simply teems with stock characters, abstractions almost, like one of those frightfully primitive medieval mystery plays―is it mystery I mean? Where there’s a fellow called Christian―’ 

Ralph twitched. Bim noticed, but clearly attributing it to the obvious, rattled on regardless. 

‘―or some such thing and the Grim Reaper swings by with his _huge_ scythe and says _strait is the gate and narrow is the way_ , but you _can_ take a friend―’ 

‘Morality play. And I think you’ve got it mixed up with _Pilgrim’s Progress_.’ 

‘Daresay. If any man on earth knew it would be you, darling.’ 

Ralph's brief speculation on the true extent of the ignorance inculcated by Bim's eccentric education (he visibly delighted in playing up to people's prejudices about nudism and daily psychoanalysis) recalled him unsettlingly to weak, milky coffee in an overheated study and a disgruntled sermon on the propensity of one’s superiors to take Luke 9:62 altogether too seriously: _there are experimental institutions where, I believe, such histrionics are almost encouraged―why the Head couldn’t have_ steered _―anyway, we knew we could rely on you, Lanyon._

‘― _so_ ,’ Bim continued, ‘I didn’t actually _twig_ until the other night at Max’s, when Claude and Theo were teasing you so very,’ he rolled his eyes in search of an adverb, ‘ineptly, that your Hazell and mine might not just be branches of the same great blossomer, but the very identical,’ he lashed his thigh with a lazy forefinger and suitable sound effects, ‘switch.’ 

Ralph raised an eyebrow, thinking with the part of his brain capable of appreciativeness that if that admixture of precision and crudity were characteristic and transferable to operational life, the war probably _would_ be over in six months. He swallowed. ‘Yours.’ 

‘Mm. Well. Which everybody looks on and calls his―while _she_ looks―no-one’s: very dear, no less. Had I better explain?’ 

‘You had.’ 

‘I think he and I were almost exact contemporaries―you’re, what, four years older?’ 

‘About that. Sixth of the third fourteen, if you prefer accuracy.’ 

‘I’ll send a telegram. He showed up after Christmas of my second year, but in the classroom we were grouped according to ability and inclination, not age, and of course there was no such thing as a House―internecine, my dear, fatal to _espirit de corps_ ―only houses, boys and girls for the accommodation of. And he lived in one that was at the opposite end of the grounds, and in which I didn’t have any friends.’ 

‘Girls?’ 

‘Yes. Didn’t you―I thought my reputation as a representative of Crank Schooling preceded me like a waft of _Soir de Paris_.’ 

Ralph’s only recourse was artlessness, which, fortunately, he could deploy with some panache. He stubbed his cigarette and looked up with a grin. ‘Sort of. But girls didn’t occur to me, somehow. What was that like?’ 

‘I’d like to say they were a civilising influence, but it was astonishingly like living with human beings, on balance. One thing, though―’ 

Bim frowned, and as his face relaxed out of it that mildly embarrassed frankness entered his expression again. 

‘―the girls set the tone―no, I suppose some fantastic old yoghurt-bibbing fruit who’d chafed off his own ballocks with jaeger knickers, cold baths and the definitive monograph on Breton dolomites―do I mean dolomites?― _set_ the tone.' 

‘Dolmens. Christ, Bim, you’ve barely started and I need another bloody drink.’ 

‘Make us one of your specials, dear. I think I’ve the requisites.’ 

Ralph was out of the chair before he registered the indignity of having received an order; the first, this afternoon, that he had _un_ thinkingly acted upon. He did the best he could with Plymouth gin and whiskery Noilly Prat as Bim continued. 

‘―but the girls administered it, as it were.’ 

‘Almost like real life.’ 

‘―how queer that you, of all people, should see that―but of course. I always forget your years as a Billingsgate porter, and if you hadn’t told me yourself I shouldn’t believe in them. What a very silly, cross-grained boy you are.’ 

Provoked, as he knew he was meant to be, Ralph seized Bim’s chin, jerked his head back, and kissed him more in the spirit of horseplay than desire. 

‘ _As_ I was saying―the girls regulated things, and you know what ruthless creatures they are. Sex was equated with sentimentality and both were called ‘silliness’: it was devastatingly effective, for the majority. As for the rest, I daresay you could get away with most things, if you didn’t schwärm―there were some grimly systematic Lesbians―or camp about. Which was rather a shame for me, because I knew I liked camping, but I wasn’t sure about fucking―yes, really, you can put that eyebrow down, it looks heavy. The varieties and pace of human development are endless. Mm―thank you.’ 

Ralph took his seat again. ‘Too sweet?’ 

‘Positively cloying, dear, but the drink takes the edge off.’ 

The only possible way to take that was ‘well’; Ralph did so, consciously. ‘I’ve still no idea,’ he said, ‘if we’re talking about the same man. Light me one too, please.’ 

‘I’m coming to that. Camping, as it happened, was how I got to know Mike Hazell.’ Bim tilted his head in minute, avian enquiry. 

Ralph accepted the cigarette, narrowing his eyes as if scanning a House list for news he didn’t particularly want to know. ‘C.M., maybe?’ Seeing from Bim’s expression that he’d really pulled it off, he snorted. ‘I wasn’t the legendary beast of the school stories, believe it or not. Might have been better all round if I had been. He was Kit at home, he said, but he didn’t like it, so he was trying, unsuccessfully, to get them to change to his middle name. But,’ to faint horror, Ralph realised his voice was irreversibly pitched in imitation, ‘he’d keep Christopher _professionally_ , you understand.’ 

Bim released one of his rare, gratifying peals of genuine laughter. ‘Unquestionably the same bloke. For quite a time I only knew him by name and sight; he didn’t care for Maths or Draughtsmanship, and I thought Fine Art Appreciation was something you did in your spare time and single-handed. We might never even have met on the stage. I did all the skits and revues, but he couldn’t sing a note and his sense of humour was too―’ 

‘Silly?’ 

‘―exactly. But he really could act: on the character side of straight, if you follow. He took the Dauphin in _Saint Joan_ , that terribly sensitive Doctor Whosit in _A Doll’s House_ , the one who’s expiring because his father picked up a dose forty years before―perhaps you’d know, it’s your area. Can that really happen, or is it just in books?’ 

Ralph shrugged, disinclined to point out for the umpteenth truthful time that the most he’d ever done to treat a VD case was draw a sketch map to the clinic on the back of an envelope, but Bim didn’t wait for a reply. 

‘―they had to cut it, anyway―and the dear old nunky-hunks himself in _Vanya_ , to give you an idea of his range. The committed troupers had rather lofty ideas about serious modernity and fifty-year moratoria on Shakespeare, and then in our last year Mike got hold of the chairmanship of the Drama Group, and _pouf_ , suddenly they’re producing _Henry V_.’ 

‘Jingo.’ 

‘Well, that’s what everybody said, but Mike was adamant: no, really it’s an anti-war play. Henry doesn’t have to be played as a terrifically butch type who strides around shrieking about holding your manhood and flinging it into breaches―he’s actually a rather highly-strung boy who’s had too much heaped on him at once, and he hasn’t even been properly trained up to it; Daddy was such a ghastly old Tartar that he drove him right into Falstaff’s open arms and open God knows what else―Mike really wanted to do _Henry IV Part One_ , as it happened, but too many knob gags and not enough parts for the girls. And he, Henry I mean, makes the most frantic bishes: trusting the wrong people, currying favour with the Other Ranks or turning martinet on them, sending up his NCOs. He only ever succeeds at all by bullying―look at the poor little Frog princess―or by a fluke so extraordinary that the only way to explain it is by an Act of God. Mike said that no other character in Shakespeare talks about God as much―that appealed to him too, I suppose. I’ve never met an English convert since who wasn’t insufferable at the atomic level, but he was truly―one can’t say _devout_ , can one? It’ll be _practising_ next―bloody hell, Ralph―inhaling it is meant to be _hyperbole_ ―is hyperbole what I mean?’ 

‘Sort―’ Ralph croaked, recovering himself and putting out his cigarette, ‘sort of, yes.’ 

‘All right, my dear? You look awfully _flushed_. Go down the wrong way, did it?’ 

‘Something like that.’ Ralph stifled another cough; reflexively, he touched the base of his collarbone, finding the hollow slick with cold sweat. 

‘Could happen to an archdeacon. And often _does_ ―where was I? Oh, yes. Mike’s left foot. Well, he didn’t talk about it much. But he tottered off to his bells and smells every Sunday and half-holiday without fail―there was no compulsory religion at the ropey old place, of course, just Gab―’ 

‘Just what?’ 

‘Gab? Oh, the whole school met in the Gym on Sunday evening, some madly keen bods would give a talk or do a sketch or something, and then the Chief would shake everyone’s hand as we filed out―everyone called it Gab, even the staff. Anyway, I was talking about _Henry V_.’ 

Distinctly nauseated, Ralph thought of excusing himself. But even that would be some small discomfiture, and anyway, he wanted to know. The continued fascination disgusted him, but it had been that way from the start: from the moment he had laid hands on Hazell’s creamy flesh, which was, like his character, at once too yielding and uncannily resilient. He had trained himself neither to dwell upon nor flinch from the memory when it surprised him, and he had come, painfully, to see that though he had been ill-used in many ways, his expulsion was not unjust, and that there was a moment at which he could have acted to preclude it. He might have moderated his murderous glare (talk about Caliban seeing his face in the glass) helped Hazell up, said _look, six of every dozen probably get something out of it and two of the six―it damn near happened to me once, if you must know. Pure physiology: it doesn’t mean a bloody thing. Run along to the bogs and clean yourself up, then forget all about it._ But he hadn’t. He’d scared the little bastard out of his wits, in which he hadn’t been very securely settled to begin with. And Jeepers had been waiting patiently at the other end of the corridor. Had Hazell ever realised he too had been set up? _On purpose laid to make the taker mad_ ― 

Bim’s expectant look receded an evolutionary stage, becoming positively saurian. Bugger introspection, Ralph thought, anticipation was the ticket. He cleared his throat. 

‘I don’t know much about Shakespeare. But I read somewhere that Henry V―the real one―took a fairly nasty packet in the face when he was just a kid. Wasn’t expected to live, but he did, and it gave him a sort of complex: thought he was indestructible―and then the article got a bit psychological, I couldn’t follow it. But the gist was that the other side of the mania was a sort of masochism―‘the messianism of the self-punishing personality,’ I think was the phrase. Didn’t they―’ he gulped the remains of his drink, ‘scourge themselves and things?’ 

Bim’s comportment shattered into complete indecency: he unhooked his ankles from the chair legs and spread his thighs wide, drumming his heels on the floor. The veins and cords of his neck stood grotesquely prominent; he let his head fall to his folded arms, discharging an unseemly sound, like a concertina dropped from a height. At length righting and curbing himself, he wheezed, ‘Oh Ralphie, darling boy, never learn subtlety. It would ruin you for―for everything. I say,’ he asked, his face suddenly all inscrutable mobility, ‘did you mean us to take it back to bed?’ 

‘No,’ Ralph said, and instantly wondered why not. ‘I was going to ask you to dinner. Or a drink at least. But if you like we shall.’ 

‘World enough and time.’ Bim spoke with the light, trailing cadence that betokened total unrepeatability. The occasional one-off did no harm, Ralph told himself. In fact, he should do it more often. ‘When do they want you at _King Alfred_?’ 

‘Sunday evening. I cleared you out of gin. Is there anything else, or do we have to go to the pub?’ 

‘Brandy. Glasses underneath, right hand side.’ Bim indicated with his thumb. Ralph got up with the assiduous drinker's token sigh of resignation at having to wait upon his host. ‘Do you want to hear the rest of this story?’ 

‘Yes, all right,’ Ralph replied, glad he had the cabinet to be studiedly casual into. 

‘Well, actually, you were spot on,’ Bim said as Ralph returned with glasses and bottle, ‘that’s exactly how Mike played it: indefatigably flying by the well-tanned seat of his pants. Off-stage as well as on. He wouldn’t delegate a single thing: he produced as well as taking the lead role. We used to say he must _sleep_ in the prop-room.’ 

Ralph frowned in scrutiny, but Bim’s face was legitimately innocent: that detail mustn’t have made it into the _on-dit_. 

‘Drove everyone scatty, especially us conventional types who were actually taking an examination or two―’ 

‘You were in it?’ 

‘Didn’t I say? The Chorus―’ 

‘Naturally.’ 

‘Only so I could say _a little touch of Harry in the night_. It was rather good fun. I was a malarial gin-soaked Old Hand in a pith-helmet. Mike was insistent on modern dress: that’s how he got it past the committee, well, that and his casting vote. I daresay he didn’t make himself popular―and in some ways he was a terrific _prima donna_ , but Ralph―’ his voice dropped into an earnestness that appeared quite unaffected, ‘you know, I liked him, as far as he went.’ 

‘And how far was that?’ Ralph winced; aiming for acerbity, he had managed instead shrill, ringing acrimony. 

‘My, my.’ Bim took out his lighter and flicked it idly. ‘Mind your bijou luppers on that torch, lovey.’ 

It was so far from the mark that Ralph couldn’t even be riled by the cant. ‘No,’ he said vaguely, ‘that’s not who―how it is―was at all.’ 

Bim shrugged. ‘Thousands wouldn’t, my dear,’ he said, but without energy. ‘Not an inch, to answer your question. I suppose we knew about each other, and maybe that was why. He’d stuffed all his libido into Henry, anyway, and it paid off. It was a raging hit. More so than Mike could have imagined, in fact. The girl who played Alice invited her great-aunt, a Mrs Chadwick, who had been a celebrated soubrette of the Edwardian stage, and Mrs Chadwick brought her _dear_ friend, who was visiting from the States, Willie Campion.’ 

Bim’s inflection gave the impression of a nonchalant release and light swirl to the floor. Ralph shook his head. 

‘Well, no, I hadn’t heard of him either―by name, by nature, by the way―but about ten years ago he was apparently on the brink of the big time. He’d had a success with a play called _White Nights_ , which was going to be turned into a big Hollywood picture. Willie’s Anglophilia took a―shall we say― _specialist_ , though not very _interesting_ , bent. When he was on this side of the pond, he would always rent a house within spitting distance of a leading public school―rumour said he couldn’t get a stiffy unless it was one named by the Clarendon Commission, but I don’t believe that―and hold tea-orgies for the choicest morsels of splendid, upstanding English young manhood. 

‘Anyway, Willie got on the scratchy side of the Headmaster of Ayrton, who sent him something crisp and laconic, provoking him into futile threats of a libel action. Of course nothing came of it, because his solicitor had heard of Oscar Wilde even if he hadn’t. But the gossip got around, then some letters and beastly little pictures―naked _fauns_ and whatnot―fell into grubby hands of the extortionate kind. Whereupon his studio decided he wasn’t quite bankable enough to be worth protecting, and dropped him like a hod of hot bricks. Somebody in the Lords was mixed up in it too, but I never got that bit of it straight. Ever resourceful, Willie worked his way back in on the production side, and now, apparently, he’s something of a minor Mogul. 

‘We all thought it was _the_ complete scream: Imogen’s big blowsy aunt, who looked like she’d escaped from the prow of a clipper in about eighteen-fifty, with a bleached-out queenly creature, quite overcome by the weight of his mauve astrakhan coat, practically pillowed on her bosom, and the both of them cutting a swathe through the clean limbs and athletic smiles of Modern, Progressively-Educated Youth. But the next morning, a too, too _vast_ spray of crimson damask roses―for Lancaster, you know; rather clever―arrived for Mike. No name on the card, just ‘Ever your martyr.’ _Well_. You’d have thought it couldn’t have been a more complete _faux pas_ , but Catholics are _so_ improbable, aren’t they? Irreverent in all the strangest places: I suppose you’ve got to have a sense of humour, haven’t you, if you believe in transubstantiation? Do I mean transub―’ 

‘I’ve no _fucking_ idea.’ Ralph moved for the fingerful that was left in the bottle. Bim extended a wholly symbolic steadying hand. 

‘Careful, dear, let me. He was tickled absolutely―well, crimson damask. And in the second post, an invitation from Mrs Chadwick. The consternation among the staff was simply delicious, but he was leaving in a fortnight anyway, so what could they do? Anyway, Mike went to the old trout’s At Home, Willie was there, and it was an entire _coup de foudre_ : apparently mutual, though Willie’s on the windy side of thirty-five. The flowers and the message were all La Chadwick’s work: Willie couldn’t be a bigger Philistine if you brought him to his knees with a slingshot, and that’s just the way Mike likes it.’ 

Ralph opened his mouth to observe the tense of the remark, paused and raised his glass to it instead. 

‘Willie offered him the traditional, barely-euphemistic post of Personal Assistant, though euphemistic enough for Ma and Pa Hazell, who I think are rather sweet, heavy-fetlocked people from Tewkesbury. Shrewsbury. Bury St Edmunds. Somewhere like that. And so off he pops to Beverley Hills, and the rest is―shh.’ Bim laid an elaborate index finger on his lips. 

Ralph’s mind snagged over and over, like a torn toenail on winceyette sheets. Eventually he said, ‘Rather a sordid tale, isn’t it?’ 

‘Less than some.’ 

‘Do you hear from him still?’ 

‘Not in about a year. I don’t suppose I shall again, now. He was applying for citizenship.’ 

There seemed very little more to say. Ralph thought of the ocean, the steep Atlantic stream, its tricornered, tri-continental, three-thousand-mile-wide bounds, that you could see on a map: yawning open-armed in the north; to the south, the world’s garderobe chute. And the things no map could tell you: its might and rage, its fickle mutability and gentle clemency, its secular dominion and howling perfidy. The uses you made of it, and the uses it made of you; the marks it left on you and the markless wake you left. He should write this down, to leave it behind when he went. He knew, at the same time, it would come circling back to him, keening and unsated, driving his resistless heart over the sail-road, the whale-path. There was no way of saying any of it. But Bim―solitary bird, lone flier―probably had his own unspeakable equivalent. 

Ralph planted his fists on the arms of the chair and levered himself strenuously to his feet. ‘Well, that which we are, we are. And that which we are, are going to go out and get properly blind.' He laid his hand on Bim's shoulder; Bim looked at it with the condescending affection of a boy for the stag-beetles or white mice that he knows he is getting too old to keep in his coat pockets, gracefully raised his head to meet Ralph's eyes with a look astute but unguarded, and nodded. 

'Come on, old artificer,' Ralph said. 'Get dressed.'


End file.
